DUBLIN Chamber of Commerce spokeswoman Gina Quinn
has taken up the cause for fast-tracking the Poolbeg incinerator.

How I wish Ms Quinn and her colleagues, who see
incineration as the cure-all for our long history of lax waste management,
would give up six weeks of their lives to attend the oral hearings,
as many of us have had to do in Cork.

There they would hear some of the things the
incinerator firms are not telling them.

They would hear, for example, how the Ringaskiddy
site is manifestly unsuitable for incinerators, failing almost every
WHO guideline on site selection.

They would hear that a US Environmental Protection
Agency area report has estimated that from one in 1,000 to one in
100 people in areas affected by emissions will get cancer. They would
hear how studies of the effects on health have been conducted mostly
on adults while our children are 25 times more seriously affected.

And they would hear how one major source of
information for our government agencies is the incinerator company
itself. None of this information would have emerged if the proposal
had been fast-tracked.

Ms Quinn was anxious about the cost of waste
disposal to businesses. A recent BBC TV programme highlighted the
importance of designing things that can be mended, used for parts
or deconstructed to separate different materials used for recycling
and composting.